The effects of quantitative easing policy on bank lending: Evidence from Japanese regional banks

This paper examines the response of Japanese regional banks to the quantitative easing operations conducted by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) using semiannual bank-level data from 2001 to 2020. Many regional banks predominantly focus on lending business in their local areas so that, unlike some previous literature, we control for the local economic conditions. We found that, compared with the pre-QQE period, the BOJ’s government bond purchase has a remarkably greater impact on regional bank’s lending after the introduction of QQE. These results suggest that the QQE policy is quite effective in promoting bank lending. Regarding the differences in bank characteristics, the magnitude of impact is larger for regional banks with a higher NPL ratio, a larger asset size, and a lower market share. The first result is consistent with the findings of Bowman et al. (2015) and Matousek et al. (2019), whereas the second and third results are novel. The Granger causality tests produce consistent results.